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You wrote a lot of words and provided zero evidence. > Which makes it weird if you ask me for evidence that God exists, sort of like asking how you know scienc

You wrote a lot of words and provided zero evidence. > Which makes it weird if you ask me for evidence that God exists, sort of like asking how you know science works. This is not at all weird to me! If you ask me how I know science works, I can point to countless thousands of studies and experiments, which result in data, which can be reproduced (if they're good experiments), and which clearly comport with the reality around us. I can also point to older scientific experiments that were incomplete or otherwise flawed, and the newer experiments which showed that the explanations offered in those prior studies were not sufficient to explain what we see in reality. This is how I know science works. > Whoever wrote that [the bible] is someone I want to follow. The bible is full of savage and senseless violence, slavery and proclamations for how to own people as property (and instructions to slaves for how to behave), and other moral horrors. What is wrong with you? The fact that you mentioned this as the first bit of "evidence" (it isn't evidence, by the way, it's a book) is sad. edit: a few responses to other nonsense in your post: > is committing a very similar intellectual sin to the the pandemic fearer What is an "intellectual sin"? > evidence is not why people believe or resist belief - the evidence is good, faith is the default, skepticism means something is going on and it's almost never about evidence [citation needed] > Lee Strobel's Case For Christ is excellent, and is even available in movie format. There's another one about C.S Lewis lol > Zero faith is a wall that can't be gotten over with evidence [citation needed] Speaking only for myself, if you presented to me objective, verifiable facts consistent with the existence of the chrsitian god, I would absolutely change my belief regarding the existence of that god! > But there is a test to look for the real issue. You can pray - something along the lines of, "God, if you're there, I'd like to know - show me." I think people from a zero faith perspective generally react to that proposition, not with the rational "lol what's the point?" but with more of a "No way, no how, absolutely not!" My reaction to this is actually neither of those, it's "okay, great, let's test prayer to see if it works!" Fortunately, many people have already done that, and it results in outcomes no better than random chance. In general there are a bunch of attempts in your post to tie faith to emotion, which is weird to me. I believe things when there is sufficient evidence to warrant them, and emotion does not factor into my decision to believe or not believe some claim.

Dove 3y ago
It is a book that shouldn't exist, powerful enough to found a civilization and turn the world upside down, and to turn individual people upside down and inside out in an astonishing range of contexts. The same tome is the battle cry of warriors and the song of martyrs and salve for paupers and satisfying to high powered intellectuals. How?? It is the best thing ever written by a wide margin, which was the first and strongest evidence to me. Is anything else like it? 1500 years in the making, dozens of authors, three continents, multiple languages, one story that hangs together and still changes the world. If God didn't write it, it must have been aliens. Violence, slavery, moral horrors? Aye, absolutely - and sex, too, shocking sex. Even a little swearing. ;) It is a book about sin and evil, after all. But if you pay attention, all the evil things are defeated in the end. Would you like to know why there are instructions for how to keep slaves in the old testament? Because humanity was an absolute bunch of moral toddlers in 1200 BC, and regulating the practice and giving slaves rights was a massive step forwards. The ideas that eventually flowered into abolition come from the Bible. The idea that all men are equal is an astonishingly counterintuitive one, given how obvious it is (and always has been) that they are not. Would you like to know why there are instructions on how to be a slave in the new testament? Because the truly righteous man can thrive and live rightly in any circumstance - even that one - and it is glorious to prove it, and that is how. Don't mistake those instructions for an endorsement of injustice. Rather, and astonishingly, it is possible to be righteous in am abjectly broken, monstrous, unjust world. You don't have to fix the world. You can do brilliant good right where you are. In a way, the ultimate middle finger to injustice is to not even care when it affects you. But I expect none of that makes any sense to you. :D It is notable to me that you say I provided zero evidence. I actually sketched quite a lot, and I linked to more. I expect what you mean is that I provided zero evidence that you think counts. No evidence "counts" for my electron-denier, or for my pandemic-phobic either. Biblically speaking, Jesus' opponents asked for a sign that he came from God and then wrote it off when he rose from the dead. Which really makes you wonder what he was supposed to do. It sounds like you are expecting to detect God in a lab. But that sort of comes full circle to what started the discussion. The experiments that are supposed to detect him would hardly be expected to work on your dad, let alone the almighty king of kings creator of the universe. I mean, he sees you. He knows what you're doing. He's very capable of doing what he wants. Or, let me put this another way. If someone were to propose to me that fairies existed, but were hiding, and I said, well I don't see them in my lab experiment, I sound pretty idiotic. I mean, duh. They're fairies. They don't want you to see them. If I were to propose the same experiment to disprove the existence of space aliens, I sound like a loon. But for some reason, the idea that The Almighty doesn't exist if he won't get in a cage with the lab rats and rabbits doesn't seem crazy to you. I mean, true or false, doesn't that entirely fly in the face of the concept?

Dove 3y ago

It is a book that shouldn't exist, powerful enough to found a civilization and turn the world upside down, and to turn individual people upside down and inside out in an astonishing range of contexts. The same tome is the battle cry of warriors and the song of martyrs and salve for paupers and satisfying to high powered intellectuals. How?? It is the best thing ever written by a wide margin, which was the first and strongest evidence to me. Is anything else like it? 1500 years in the making, dozens of authors, three continents, multiple languages, one story that hangs together and still changes the world. If God didn't write it, it must have been aliens. Violence, slavery, moral horrors? Aye, absolutely - and sex, too, shocking sex. Even a little swearing. ;) It is a book about sin and evil, after all. But if you pay attention, all the evil things are defeated in the end. Would you like to know why there are instructions for how to keep slaves in the old testament? Because humanity was an absolute bunch of moral toddlers in 1200 BC, and regulating the practice and giving slaves rights was a massive step forwards. The ideas that eventually flowered into abolition come from the Bible. The idea that all men are equal is an astonishingly counterintuitive one, given how obvious it is (and always has been) that they are not. Would you like to know why there are instructions on how to be a slave in the new testament? Because the truly righteous man can thrive and live rightly in any circumstance - even that one - and it is glorious to prove it, and that is how. Don't mistake those instructions for an endorsement of injustice. Rather, and astonishingly, it is possible to be righteous in am abjectly broken, monstrous, unjust world. You don't have to fix the world. You can do brilliant good right where you are. In a way, the ultimate middle finger to injustice is to not even care when it affects you. But I expect none of that makes any sense to you. :D It is notable to me that you say I provided zero evidence. I actually sketched quite a lot, and I linked to more. I expect what you mean is that I provided zero evidence that you think counts. No evidence "counts" for my electron-denier, or for my pandemic-phobic either. Biblically speaking, Jesus' opponents asked for a sign that he came from God and then wrote it off when he rose from the dead. Which really makes you wonder what he was supposed to do. It sounds like you are expecting to detect God in a lab. But that sort of comes full circle to what started the discussion. The experiments that are supposed to detect him would hardly be expected to work on your dad, let alone the almighty king of kings creator of the universe. I mean, he sees you. He knows what you're doing. He's very capable of doing what he wants. Or, let me put this another way. If someone were to propose to me that fairies existed, but were hiding, and I said, well I don't see them in my lab experiment, I sound pretty idiotic. I mean, duh. They're fairies. They don't want you to see them. If I were to propose the same experiment to disprove the existence of space aliens, I sound like a loon. But for some reason, the idea that The Almighty doesn't exist if he won't get in a cage with the lab rats and rabbits doesn't seem crazy to you. I mean, true or false, doesn't that entirely fly in the face of the concept?